A team of Australian and international researchers have received an award for finding a way to predict when critical pipes delivering fresh water will fail, allowing effective predictive maintenance of water supply infrastructure.
University of Newcastle's Professor Robert Melchers and his team of national and international researchers were presented the International Water Association award for innovation on 12 October 2016 in Brisbane, at the Global Awards Ceremony of the International Water Association’s World Water Congress and Exhibition.
There are over $500 billion worth of critical pipe assets in Australia, the UK and the US. Most are underground, sometimes buried in highly aggressive soils that can cause the pipes to fail. Water authorities around the world urgently needed a way to predict where and when critical pipes would suffer major failures, in order to put in place effective, long-term preventative measures.
The researchers undertook a six-year, $16 million project to improve prediction of pipe failure, reduce costs, and improve reliability of water infrastructure networks.
Both utilities and research institutions were involved in the project, including Sydney Water Corporation, UK Water Industry Research Ltd., Water Research Foundation of the USA, Water Corporation (WA), City West Water, Melbourne Water, Yarra Valley Water, South Australia Water Corporation, Queensland Urban Utilities, South East Water Ltd, and Hunter Water Corporation.
On the research side, Monash University leads the project, supported by University of Technology Sydney and the University of Newcastle.
One of the three core activities in the project was led by the University of Newcastle researchers, who were responsible for estimating how to assess current corrosion and deterioration of the buried pipes and to accurately predict likely future deterioration.
The team developed and calibrated a realistic predictive model for the corrosion of cast iron pipes in soil, leveraging information from field case studies and machine learning techniques. They successfully applied research experience from other corrosion areas to the project, busted a few pipe maintenance myths, and worked closely with the industry to ensure the research would have an impact on decision making.
They also produced a 1.2 km long research pipe test bed and an automated pipe burst testing facility, which will be of use in further research.
The corrosion prediction work used state of the art 3D laser imaging techniques to model the pipe surface characteristics. Now, a number of water utilities have adopted this method of data collecting as part of their normal operations.
Infrastructure will be a major topic of discussion at the Australian Engineering Conference 2016 in Brisbane on November 23-25.